It’s Official: US Abdication Of International Leadership Is State Policy, Not Mere Ineptitude

Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Peter Tarnoff yesterday dispelled any lingering doubts about the Clinton foreign policy. According to the "Tarnoff Doctrine," the United States neither has the resources nor the will any longer to be the leader of the international community — and "our friends" around the world had better get used to it.

In remarks made "on background" to the Overseas Writers Club in Washington on 25 May, Secretary Tarnoff articulated the vision of an America in decline — preoccupied with domestic economic concerns and increasingly disengaged from international developments — that could only be inferred heretofore from Clinton policies:

"We simply don’t have the leverage, we don’t have the influence, we don’t have the inclination to use force and we certainly don’t have the money to bring to bear the kind of pressure that will produce positive results any time soon.

 

 

"[Our] approach is difficult for our friends to understand. It’s not different by accident, it’s different by design….We’re talking about new rules of engagement for the United States. There will have to be genuine power-sharing and responsibility-sharing."

 

Collective Insecurity

The key ingredient in the "Tarnoff Doctrine" is its reliance upon "collective security." Put simply, this concept means that the U.S. will voluntarily decline to act — except in circumstances where U.S. interests are immediately at risk — unless multilateral consensus can be achieved. As Tarnoff put it:

"There may be occasions in the future where the United States acts unilaterally — if we perceive an imminent danger very close to home that can be defended and where the amount of resources that we expend are commensurate with what our interests are. But these will be exceptions." (Emphasis added.)

 

The results of the first test of this strategy is on vivid display in Bosnia. Tarnoff extolled Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s trip to discuss Bosnia options with key European allies and the Russian leadership as a "form of leadership that’s quite appropriate" in the post-Cold War world: "People were genuinely disarmed by the fact that he was there to consult. He did not have a blueprint in his back pocket….He had some things we favored."

Never mind that Christopher’s mission had been described at the time as designed to generate allied support for military action against the Bosnian Serbs. Never mind either that the people who should have been "disarmed" — but have not been — are the Serbian aggressors in this conflict. Instead, the Clinton emphasis upon consultation, consensus and multilateralism simply had the effect of sealing the fate of the victims of that aggression. In the process, it also underscored the yawning vacuum of power that is now emerging as the United States once again tries to disengage from overseas responsibilities.

Real Costs from U.S. Abdication of Leadership

The reaction to this unmistakable vacuum is beginning to be seen around the globe, including in actions of the following members of what the Center for Security Policy calls "the Radical Entente"(1):

Serbia: With the United States having agreed to the five-nation, lowest common denominator-driven multilateral approach to the crisis in Bosnia — an arrangement which, if implemented, would assure that allied forces will be committed to Bosnia only to lend legitimacy and protection to Serbian territorial acquisitions — Slobodan Milosevic and his proxies have been further emboldened. The "ethnic cleansing" and consolidation of Serbian positions on the ground in Bosnia goes on apace, even as Milosevic has refused to allow international monitoring of his dubious pledge to close his border to shipments of anything but food and medicine to Serb-controlled Bosnia.

Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s response to the "different" American policy has been no less striking. His regime is increasingly suspected of playing a role in the World Trade Center bombing. He evidently undertook a comprehensive effort to assassinate former President George Bush. His military has taken potshots at allied aircraft enforcing the southern no-fly zone over Iraq. And he has interfered with and otherwise undercut U.N. inspection operations in Iraq — including denying the inspectors use of helicopters essential for their missions. To date, none of these actions has resulted in appreciable penalties or costs to Saddam.

In the absence of retribution, the Iraqi dictator has apparently concluded that the time has come for still bolder action. He has massed roughly 75,000-100,000 troops south of the 36th parallel and northern "no-fly" zone — setting the stage for a new genocidal campaign against the Kurds outside of the nominally protected area and, in the absence of concerted allied opposition, in due course inside it, as well.

Saddam has also evidently established a modus vivendi with his most bitter enemies — the Iranians — that is enabling Baghdad to sell refined oil and cement to Iran and to obtain imported goods through Iranian trade routes, notwithstanding international sanctions against Saddam’s regime. In return, it appears the Iraqi despot has agreed to allow the Iranians to attack bases in Iraq of the People’s Mujahedeen, the Iranian opposition group that has operated for years against the mullahs of Teheran with the assistance and protection of Saddam Hussein.

Iran: The diminished U.S. influence with its allies has not been lost on the radical Islamic extremist rulers of Teheran, either. After half-hearted U.S. efforts failed to block $460 million in new loans by the World Bank to Iran in March 1993, Washington appears to have done little more to put a crimp in its allies’ appetite for trade and flows of militarily relevant high technology to the Iranian government. In part as a result, Teheran’s efforts to obtain weaponry of mass destruction are succeeding.

This dismal record is all the more striking since the National Security Council’s top official on Middle East issues, Martin Indyk, last week articulated a very different approach toward Iran (and Iraq) — one that envisioned an active and leading role for the United States in stark contrast with the "Tarnoff Doctrine"(2):

"In the absence of dramatic changes in Iran’s behavior, we will work energetically to persuade our European and Japanese allies, as well as Russia and China, that it is not in their interests to assist Iran to acquire nuclear weapons or the conventional means to pose a regional threat. Nor do we believe it is in their interests to ease Iran’s economic situation so that it can pursue normal commercial relations on one level while threatening our common interests on another level.

 

"We will pursue this effort of active containment unilaterally, maintaining the counterterrorism sanctions and other measures enacted by previous administrations to encourage a change in Iranian behavior."

 

North Korea: With just a few days left before North Korea’s decision to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty becomes effective, the United States is feverishly trying to come up with incentives (read, bribes) that might induce Pyongyang to remain nominally within the Treaty. To date, these reportedly include: a commitment that the United States would never use nuclear weapons against North Korea; the annual joint U.S.-South Korean "Team Spirit" exercises would be permanently suspended; South Korean nuclear facilities would be inspected at the same time as North Korean facilities; and new political and economic relations would be considered.

Unfortunately, such concessions — which will have the effect of reducing U.S. deterrent options, decreasing the readiness of allied forces deployed for the defense of South Korea and reinforcing North Korean efforts to equate Seoul’s civilian nuclear power program with the North’s bomb-building campaign — will not correct the underlying problem: The NPT regime does not prevent determined nations from acquiring nuclear weapons. Neither does it assure that the international community will be given timely and indisputable warning that such nations are doing so.

Consequently, the net effect of current U.S. diplomacy may be to reward North Korea for its systematic subversion of international commitments pursuant to the NPT and a papering over of the fundamental reality — namely, that Pyongyang will shortly have at least primitive nuclear weapons capabilities, if it does not already have them. Having failed to check this development, the West will shortly be faced with its twin repercussions: 1) new impetuses behind nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia, as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and perhaps others are driven to follow suit; and 2) the likely sale of North Korean nuclear technology to other pariah states, such as Iran and Syria.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy strongly disagrees with the "Tarnoff Doctrine." This doctrine embraces an approach Lady Margaret Thatcher has properly reviled as "leadership by consensus" — an oxymoronic concept doomed to fail. In embracing this strategy, the Clinton Administration is poised to recreate the international conditions precipitated by the Carter Administration (which Peter Tarnoff also served as a senior State Department official): An environment in which America continues to have global interests but is perceived to lack the will, if not the resources to safeguard them, and inevitably finds those interests in jeopardy even from what Tarnoff calls "middleweight powers."

The Center finds it instructive that another former Carter hand, Secretary Christopher, chose not to repudiate Tarnoff or to disassociate himself from his remarks. While he did assert blithely in a telephone interview last evening with the Washington Post that, "There is no derogation of our powers and our responsibility to lead," Mr. Christopher on ABC New’s "Nightline" subsequently affirmed the essence of the Tarnoff Doctrine:

"We can’t do it all. We have to measure our ability to act in the interests of the United States, but to save our power for those situations which threaten our deepest national interest, at the same time doing all we can where there’s humanitarian concern."

 

The Center for Security Policy believes that the surest way to fritter away power and lose influence in the international arena is to try to husband it. It is only by exercising leadership that one retains the ability to do so in situations that "threaten our deepest national interest."

The only people who could believe the United States will be better positioned to lead its allies in the wake of the Bosnian debacle and the enunciation of the "Tarnoff Doctrine" are probably the same people who think that U.S. economic problems will prove more tractable as America’s power and influence over Japan, Germany and other trading partners evaporates. It is a real tragedy — and may prove to be a very costly one — that such people hold high office in the U.S. government at this perilous moment.

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1. See the Center for Security Policy’s recent Decision Brief, "A Good Week for the ‘Radical Entente’: Outlaw Nations Likely Emboldened by Ineffectual Western Responses," (No. 93-D 28, 2 April 1993).

2. See the Center’s Decision Brief, "Clinton’s New Mideast ‘Containment’ Strategy: Start by Punishing Saddam For Trying to Kill George Bush," (No. 93-D 41, 21 May 1993).